EDIT: I suppose I created this thread a bit too early, which is why it's been a while since there have been new posts. I've been planning things out a little bit better, so hopefully this little project of mine won't fall on it's face. The stories below will serve as a preview of events to come, with the official launch happening early next year (my aim is January 19th, if not sooner.) It will focus on Nominus Prime leading a team of Cybertronian soldiers against an invading alien force looking to claim Cybertron as its own. Stay tuned for more!

Feels good posting in the fanfic forum again. Anyways, I have an idea in my head for something big, but I need to properly build up to it. Transformers: Frontier is my personal timeline, and I have stories for it that run from the rise of Sentinel Prime to the Final War. The scope of my story is quite massive, but I want to go about it in an approach similar to that of the Mosaic comics. There will be a plethora of stories that all focus on different characters from across TF lore. This is *technically* a G1 style timeline, but it will feature familiar characters from other eras as well. I hope you all enjoy!

To kick things off, here's a piece titled "Wind," and it focuses on a young Cybertronian who lives in the slums.

“You’re not paid to think,” he says. To him, I’m just a thug, an idiot who’s only useful when someone needs to be brutalized. I had dreams, aspirations, hope for the future. I may have been lost and without a purpose, but at least I knew who I was. With Mercury, it feels like a little bit of the old me dies away every day.
My life was so simple before I met him. I can remember my friends with great fondness, though they probably can’t say the same thing about me. Blackjack. Rad. Good ol’ Smokey. I betrayed them all and left them in the dust. And for what?
“Hurry up, Windy!” they used to tell me. “The handouts are coming!”
Once every week, there was this charity group that came by the slums. They were all so friendly to us, but in a condescending way that was ever-so-subtle. They’d offer medical assistance to those who were too poor to afford professional treatment. They’d give us nourishment, as many of us were starving. The guys and me, we used to depend on “LifeSpark” just to get by from week to week. Everyone was always so happy when they came. We might as well have just won a war what with all the commotion and celebrating that went on.
“Check out what I’ve got!” I remember ol’ Smokey exclaiming after one visit from LifeSpark.
He was proudly holding a huge bundle of supplies. Someone else’s supplies.
“Who’d you con this time?” I asked him.
“Oh, no one important. Just some guy named Wheezel.”
“You can’t keep those. You know that, right?”
“I won’em, didn’t I?”
“Fair n’ square?”
“Well….”
Good Ol’ Smokey was always cheating others out of whatever it was they had. It was more for his amusement than anything, since he knew that Rad or Blackjack or I would eventually convince him to give his winnings back. Regardless of his practices, he was a decent guy. They all were. Oh, what I would give to have those moments back. If only I could go back in time and stop myself from-I’m sorry. I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
So it was a pretty typical day in the slums. Some had gathered around to make music; others were “getting glitched.” This was the term the lowest of the lowlifes gave to intoxicating themselves. There was one time when I caught Rad getting glitched, but we set him straight right away. Anyways, it was a typical day and everyone was waiting for LifeSpark to arrive, but they didn’t. Their truck came in, sure, but the LifeSpark volunteers weren’t inside. Instead, we were ambushed by a group of “scientists.” I knew the moment I saw these guys that they were bad news. They all had these nasty smirks on their faces. I remember one seemed to have a deformed hand. It was almost like a claw. Two were brandishing guns-kinds I had never seen before.
“Listen up, all of you!” said one adorned in blue and gray. He was obviously the leader. “I present to you all a golden opportunity. You see, I consider myself to be an excellent scientist. I am quite known all throughout the planet for my work. I have a problem, however. As of late my grandest machine, the Overrdrive, has been malfunctioning. Now, I suppose I could personally go inside my creation and see what is wrong with it, but I tend to perish that thought. Why? Because it is an intensely dangerous task that I can’t risk injuring myself over. I have value. You do not. It is for this reason that I thought to come here and recruit volunteers who would be willing to aid me in my experiments. Essentially you would be my lab rats, making sure all of my products will be safe for potential customers. Do I have any takers on this position? I may need more than one.”
No one spoke. This was easily the tensest moment of my life. These “scientists” had their weapons trained on us, and I knew they wouldn’t hesitate to kill any of us just to make a point. I was about to give myself so long as it meant my fellow down-and-outs would remain safe.
“No one?” the ringleader asked. “Fine. Cablejumper, scour them for prospects. And do not take no for an answer.
Cablejumper, the one with the claw-like hand, immediately leapt into the crowd and began to violently attack anyone he deemed “unfit to serve.” If he ran into one of us who could actually take him on in fight, he would simply call in his lackeys and they’d carry the poor soul away.
“He wants to find the strongest of us,” I said to Rad grimly.
“Well then why should we keep him waiting?” I remember him saying.
Those were the last words I ever heard him speak. With a show of idiotic bravery, he marched up to Cablejumper, hands balled into fists, and began shouting out various profanities. Cablejumper, evidently, didn’t take kindly to this. He grabbed poor Rad by the neck with his claw hand and began squeezing. Harder. Harder. Harder.

“What are you doing?”
“Oh, sorry, Cablejumper, I was just daydreaming I guess.”
“You better get to work, or the boss will get angry. Well, didn’t you hear me? Get going! What Mercury ever saw in you I’ll never know.”
I never would’ve believed someone if they were to tell me that the person who murdered by best friend would end up being my coworker someday. I’d call them insane. To this day, I remember seething with hatred at the sight of this brute as he slowly choked Rad to death. I was so helpless though. I wanted to do something, but I wasn’t a fighter back then. If I had half the skills then as I do know, I know that Cablejumper would be dead right now and that Rad would be properly avenged.
“That’s quite enough!” someone shouted over the din of slaughter.
Everyone stopped to look. Everyone. Cablejumper even stopped his rampage to see what was going on. The crowds parted, allowing a haggard looking old man to pass by. This was Scrounge. Everyone in my slum saw him as something of a father-or grandfather-figure. He walked with a limp, but he did so with pride and purpose. He stared the ringleader dead in the eye.
“Why are you doing this to my slum, stranger?” he asked. “Have we done something to upset you? Who are you anyways?”
“My name is Mercury, top scientist in the service of one called Clench. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
“I have. Terrible ruffian. He runs the arena, does he not? What use does he have for a scientist?”
“Blades and daggers just aren’t appealing to the public anymore,” he replied with a vicious smile. “Clench relies on me to make all sorts of wonderful new weapons for his gladiators to use.”
“If it is all the same to you,” Scrounge replied with incredible stoicism, “I’d rather not let my friends become test subjects. Now be gone, all of you.”
“Listen, elder one,” Cablejumper said, “you don’t want us doing something violent to you, do you?”
Cablejumper let Rad’s body crash to the ground. Scrounge examined the body briefly and then calmly brushed past the claw-handed brute and walked straight up to Mercury. His index finger alone said, “Get out of here now, or you will regret it.” Mercury stared the old one down. And then something caught his eye. I caught his eye.
“You there,” he suddenly shouted. “What is your name?”
“I am—“
“You have no business with him. Now leave this place.”
Mercury didn’t take kindly to taking orders from someone so old, so he grabbed poor Scrounge by the arms and put him into submission. Then he stared at me.
“What is your name?” he asked again.
“Let him go!” I pleaded.
“What is your name?”
In all honesty, I didn’t have a name at that time. I don’t remember ever having one. Whenever someone would address me, they’d say “Hey you!” or something to that effect. I remember ol’ Smokey giving me a nickname though. He called me Windy. I don’t remember why. He may have thought I spoke too much, or maybe it was because I was so swift and uncontrollable when we first meet. Maybe it was just the first name that popped into ol’ Smokey’s mind and it just stuck.
“Windy,” I finally responded.
“Tell you what, Windy, you seem to be a strong and competent fellow. What if I offered you a chance to get out of this disease and rust ridden town to work for me?”
“What makes me so special that I get a choice? You seemed to have no problem taking the others away by force.”
“They’re going to be lab rats, Windy,” Mercury said calmly, still holding Scrounge in submission. “You, on the other hand, have something special about you. I can’t quite place it, but you’re different from all of these lowlifes. I want to make a deal with you now. You join me, I let your friend go.”
“Not just him. If I go with you, you have to let everyone else go.”
“Kid, don’t do this,” Blackjack had pleaded. “It’s not a safe bet. These guys, they’ll go back on their word!”
“Come now,” Mercury butted in. “Would I do something like that? I’m offering you a deal here, and you best take it, because if you don’t I’ll kill the old one.”
I remember looking deep into Scrounge’s eyes. They seemed to be pleaded the same case as Blackjack, yet his mouth said nothing.
“Well, what do you say?”
“I go, you leave everyone alone?”
“Yes.”
If I could just go back and stop myself, I would. I should’ve listened to Blackjack, because he was right. They took me away and at first I had thought that my friends were safe. I worked for them for quite some time, legally being property of Mercury and by extension Clench. I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.
Then I got the news. As it turns out, once I was legally bound to serve Mercury, he ordered Cablejumper to return to my slum and completely destroy everything. My slums were decimated, yet its inhabitants were kept alive. They had nothing. No food, no shelter, no money, nothing. When I found out that my friends were left desolate, I cussed Mercury out. He responded by slapping me and telling me to get back to work, and that was that.
Over time, I became hardened as I committed atrocity after atrocity. This is my life now. I work for monsters and make weapons that kill the innocent. I have no choice. I have no way out.

Thanks for reading, guys! That first one was actually a story I wrote for school in it's entirety. This next one is a direct sequel in the form of a miniseries and it's titled Roughrider's Log.

Roughrider’s Log: Entry One
I’m really used to working solo. So far every mission I’ve been on has been with a team. But Ironhide trusts me, and I’m not about to let him down. He stationed me here in this wreck of a city-Altihex-and I’m supposed to wait for an intercepted Lifespark carrier to come by and board it without raising suspicions.
Easy enough, but the hard part is what happens next. The carrier is supposed to take me to the base of a team of Decepticon scientists. They’re more sadistic and cruel than your typical Con, from what I hear. The ringleader, Mercury, has been sending in his goons to take “volunteers” for his science experiments. I—

“You there!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Come over here.”

This guy must be one of Mercury’s. He’s bothandling me like I’m some piece of equipment. He seems impressed. Personally I don’t blame him. He slaps a pair of stasis cuffs on me and loads me in to the carrier.
This should be fun.

All right, those first two were more of a preview of some more stories to come. I guess I kind of preemptively did my first post, but I can confidently say that production of Frontier is well underway. I just need to iron out a few things continuity wise.

Our first major story arc will take place before the Decepticons came to be. Instead, the heroes of Cybertron, lead by Nominus Prime must face a group of alien invaders hellbent on claiming (or possibly reclaiming?) the Autobots' homeworld.

Stay tuned for the official launch of Transformers: Frontier with the miniseries, At Freedom's Barricades! Coming early next year.